Huawei and ZTE have stepped up their optical networking presence by announcing new technologies capable of supporting SDN.

ZTE today said it has unveiled the ZXONE 9700 Packet OTN series, its next generation packet optical transport platform (P-OTP), featuring universal packet and optical data unit (ODU) switching capability with the network evolution support to beyond 100G.

On the other hand, ZTE rival Huawei has launched Flex Optical Network, the fifth-generation optical network architecture.

Both support SDN or software-defined networking.

Huawei in a statement said the new architecture paves a new direction in the evolution of optical transport technology.

Huawei’s SDN-based Flex Optical Network features resilient large pipes, multi-layer synergy, and SDN-enabled openness.

Resilient large pipes, which support flex-optical layer, flex-electrical layer, and flex-capacity technologies, are expected to carry high, fluctuating volume of traffic.

Huawei said Flex-optical layer can improve spectral efficiency, while the Flex-electrical layer adopts Nx100G based Flex-OTN architecture, allowing for flexible service switching and multiplexing within large-capacity pipes. Using powerful signal modulation technologies, flex-capacity can achieve on-demand transmission capacity or distance.

Efficient multi-layer synergy includes cross-layer IP and optical synergy, cross-domain management of NE groups, and per-NE based wavelength-OTN-Ethernet synergy (synergy across Layer 0, Layer 1, and Layer 2).

The multi-layer synergy empowers a smart policy engine to improve the overall pipe efficiency. The per-bit delivery cost can vary with each pipe layer, and this synergy offers cost-effective traffic control, said Huawei.

The ZTE ZXONE 9700 series offers a universal switching capacity from 2T to 14T, with the potential of a further upgrade to 28T, enabling operators to achieve greater flexibility and optimized wavelength utilization to meet increasing bandwidth requirements. The ZXONE 9700 also extends multi-protocol label switching-transport profile (MPLS-TP) networking capability from the core to the metro/regional network.